Business Briefs

STAFF WRITER WITH AGENCIES

SinoPac looks for partners

SinoPac Holdings Co (建華金控), the nation's 10th-biggest financial holding company by market value, said it hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc as a financial adviser to find merger partners at home and overseas.

Goldman contacted six local financial companies and three overseas lenders to test their interest in merging with SinoPac, Peng said, declining to elaborate.

China Airlines Co (華航), Taiwan's largest air carrier, announced yesterday to launch code-share cooperation on the Kaohsiung-Bangkok route with Thai Airways International.

The code-share service, aimed to reduce marketing and operation costs, will start Dec. 1. In the initial stage, the service will include 10 flights per week -- seven flights served by China Airlines and three by Thai Airways.

China Airlines and Thai Airways have made available the code-share flights for reservation on Nov. 1.

"If the cooperation on the Kaohsiung-Bangkok route works well, both sides may expand the cooperation scope in the future," China Airlines said in a statement.

The carrier currently has code-share cooperation with Delta Air Lines, Alitalia, Vietnam Airlines and Guard Indonesia.

Taiwan Salt shares sold

The government said it has successfully sold out 59.35 percent, or 148 million shares, of Taiwan Salt Co (Taisalt, 台鹽) on Wednesday, making the former state-run enterprise into a private entity, according to a statement by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The ministry now holds 40.65 percent of the company's shares.

Following the privatization, Taisalt is scheduled to list on the TAIEX next Tuesday at a price of NT$19.28 per share, the statement said.

Taisalt, with paid-in capital of NT$2.5 billion, reported NT$2.08 billion in sales for the first eight months of the year, up 9.76 percent from a year ago.

ROC guns for FTA with US

The ROC representative office in the US has stepped up efforts to remove obstacles to the start of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), a senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official said on Thursday.